Tiptoes on Cobblestones
by hell rings
Summary: Bel thinks she looks even lovelier like this than she did when she was alive, and he smiles fondly in a morbid fashion like he's in a gallery surveying Picasso.


In all of his time of knowing her – all the sun kissed days or moon laden nights under the Italian sky, the rolling breezes that slid off the vineyards – Belphegor never learned her name. All he knew was that she tasted like red roses and their petals and their thorns, and she was nothing but skin and long hair and teeth and bones, all his for the taking when they would see each other on the precarious dates. It was roughly planned and neither would pay close attention to the time, so it wasn't rare that one would end up alone for hours at a time or alone entirely.

She was Spanish (he thought) and he had the inky feeling that she knew of his mafia connections but she would never say anything, just flutter her dark lashes and smile with her vanilla breath on his lips. It was always then that he'd have to drink every inch of her visage, fingers skimming everything he could touch; remove the straps here, ride up the hem of her lacy dress there and forget that they're in public. There was never anything emotional about it, it was just pure want of another human's contact. They didn't share each other's histories, nor was there ever any real talking and they only things they ever exchanged was heat and feather branded touches. And they'd fuck, fuck, fuck, you got it, see you next month if you're still breathing.

Everyone in the Varia knew of the fling – Bel was hardly anything but subtle – and he'd always come back home smelling of sex and _Caron's Poivre_ perfume. There were no questions and the assassins would open their mouths like fish just to close them again and stand in their quiet knowing, and Belphegor would retire to his room for some well deserved rest because he never stayed with his Lady longer than necessary.

They would go dancing, she in her glass stilettos and he in his devious smirk because it's four am in the morning and he has a target to be killed in two hours on the dot, and the show has barely even begun. They would get lost in the tangled limbs of writhing mass that pulsed to the beat of a foreign song neither had heard of and his head would spin and he would ache, his heart beating in an alien rhythm and he could feel himself ceasing to exist, like all the kings and queens before him that were grounded into history. He would become a story to tell, a lesson to teach, a cheap documentary on the television that no one would watch. He'd be buried in dusty old books and slip in and out of pages and into people's eyes and their brains, and exit through their memories like a ghost.

He and his Lady would trample out of the club and land against the dirty concrete slab of a building next to them, in a pile of drunken laughter. It would be then that they would realize that they would realize it's raining, the crystalline drops a dark black against the darker black skyline, minus the pale yellow glow of street lights. Their clothes would greedily absorb the water and soak them to their core, and they can't even make it to her apartment when his shirt comes off and the rain is warm and inviting on his skin, not cold. He shivers for entirely different reasons and she's on top of him and he's on the ground and there's only twenty minutes left until the job he thinks. Maybe less, but _there's still time there's still time._

The thought suddenly strikes him mid-moan, _does she even speak his language?_ They rarely get past hellos and how are yous, cutting straight to the action like heat seeking missiles. His mind is cloudy and he feels so damn good, him and his familiar stranger. Whether she knows his tongue or not, it doesn't matter to him because they have a mutual understanding of their expectations and demands, how things progress and then end, and they'll depart not knowing if they'll see each other again. No strings attached or wires to cut, only the scratches on his back that she left with her long nails or the lovebites he littered onto her shoulders and neck.

It's 7:03 am and they're laying naked in the abandoned street, curled into each other like desperate animals. He inhales her skin and exhales a tired kiss, and the woman pushes her face into his neck. His head hurts from the alcohol that he drank all night and there's a particular drilling in his head, shredding his brain and he forgets everything.

They sleep, hushed and alone because the cobblestones are too uneven for people to walk on and the shops are dead, the economy taken a turn for the worse. Only prostitutes and gang members sometimes, and drug dealers and their dedicated customers live here in the rat holes like miniaturize people who represent nothing. Just a broken culture and class that people with money pretend don't exist until it makes the morning news, so their eyes could water at the tragedy of how easy it is to destroy human life when it spirals out of control like hurricanes.

Belphegor dreams of his castle, the white walls crumbling in on him and it crushes him but he melts and escapes through the cracks of the stones. The air solidifies him and he's a person again, not remarkably anything but himself. He fits and glues together like a puzzle and the floor is a chessboard, he discovers. Xanxus is the king and there is no queen. Belphegor is a knight and so is Squalo, Lussuria is a rook and Levi is a pawn. There's an infinite number of pieces against them and Belphegor doesn't know how to move, everyone belting orders for him to _move goddammit move_ but he can't, and he topples over with the distinct sound of a gun shot when he hits the floor.

His eyes snap open at 8:47 am and he thinks his nose is broken, Bel lets out a muffled moan and rolls onto his side to see the boot of someone he doesn't know. His vision travels up the leg attached and it's a man with an old revolver pointed at his head. The puddle he's laying in isn't filled with rainwater so much as it is blood, and the assassin-prince quickly grabs onto the ankle next to him and sharply pulls like he's yanking out a tooth or a splinter. The man yelps and falls, and there's a crack like wood splitting, splinters everywhere, and Bel isn't sure when it happened but he's wearing pants. He wrestles the gun away and doesn't hesitate to pull the trigger, _bang_. What used to be a head is now a painting on the ground, flesh and flecks and chips stone mixed together like art.

It's beautiful.

Bel's hand finds itself at his nose and meets dried blood. Kick to the head, no concussion or serious damage. He'll be fine after he takes some pain killers and Lussuria resets his nose.

He doesn't have to be a genius to know that his Lady is dead, the Spanish (he thinks) woman laying in her own rapidly cooling blood. Her mouth is open in a would-have-been scream and her eyes are wide and open, her hair matted like a dog's. There's a rose on her breast, a pretty blossom of red staining her bare skin and dripping down her sides. He can see a rib. Bel thinks she looks even lovelier like this than she did when she was alive, and he smiles fondly in a morbid fashion like he's in a gallery surveying Picasso. His thin arm reaches out and he closes her eyelids, and he mumbles some prayer he once heard on television when he was a boy because she might have liked that, as he remembered her carrying a rosary with her until he took it off of her with his teeth and it fell to the floor, never to be seen again.

Belphegor stands and gains a bird's eye view of the woman, taking in her sight and all it's glory and it's a shame that it wasn't he who had killed her. He doesn't feel a tinge of remorse or feeling, other than the great fuck he just lost.

He leaves at 8:56 am and returns home sometime after nine, ignoring the Knight's incessant chattering over why the hell does he look like he was in a ditch all night, you stupid little shit. Bel tells him to fuck off and he goes to find Lussuria, all the while as he absently wonders if his Lady ever told him her name.


End file.
